Review: Don’t Hate the Player… Hate the Game

by Katie Ashley

‘I raised my eyebrows skeptically. “Warm one up? I thought all you had to do was look in their direction, and they’d fling their clothes off and fall over.” Jake laughed . “Usually …but not this girl . She needs a little work, and trust me, it’s sexy as hell.”’
Kindle Location 391

I hate it when I don’t seem to have the same view of a book as everyone else. I get this feeling that I’ve missed something, something that would completely swing my view of it.

But I can only tell it as I find it and this just wasn’t for me.

Noah’s best friend Jake is a douchebag, a player who sleeps around and treats girls like they don’t matter. So when Jake dies in an accidental tractor explosion, and Noah finds an engagement ring with Jakes belongings, he and Jakes family don’t know what to think. Who is this girl that meant so much to Jake?

I don’t know whether it was just me but, I found it a little too obvious who the girl was going to be and so spent the first 40% of the book thinking just get on with it! I know who it is, if you can’t see it then you’re blind! My annoyance was heightened by the fact that I couldn’t understand the relationship between Jake and the ‘mysterious’ girl. I felt like Jake’s love was insincere. Just look at the quote above! I don’t know, but to me it screams, she’s a challenge. I don’t actually care for her, it’s just a long play game! I never once believed that Jake really cared about her and as a result found it so infuriating all this crying over a guy that really wasn’t very nice.

Noah starts to develop feelings for a girl called Maddie. I found this to be cute, but it was very slow and didn’t develop till quite late on in the book. The only thing that was truly lovely in Don’t hate the player was the relationship Noah had with his family. I loved the story with his mum and her new life, and his reconnection with his dad. It felt more realistic and showed Noah’s insecurities. I thought this was handled better than his feelings of loss (of both his best friend and Grandaddy).

Overall, so many have given this high marks so perhaps it is just me, but I personally thought it too obvious who the girl was and found the story, from that point on, didn’t flow well. I loved the cover and think that perhaps the New Adult style cover was a little deceptive as I didn’t think there was the romance components necessary to move this out of the YA corner.